If we can only perceive what we have previously encountered, then how does a newborn baby see anything? Do we have to have prior knowledge in order to perceive?

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Although I liked the movie and thought it had some good points, there are others which I didn't agree with. That was one of them.

Travis

I haven't seen the movie, but I would offer that religion gives us a chance to makes leaps of understanding - not that I think this is historical fact, the a shaman did any such things. But of not being able to make sense of ships approaching such, sure - see post elsewhere about documented situations and conditions (such as suseptibility to so called visual illusions) in the other post.

I do not think that we are born or have to have prior knowledge for an experience to mean something. The great thing about the human brain development is that we can expereince new events and learn about them, THEN use them as prior knowledge for another event.

Didn't see the movie.

This brings to mind another thing my zen teacher told me once.

"Every moment is a new experience, what's so special?"

When the ships arrived, the natives saw them as what they were. With no labels, no words to describe them, no preconceived notions and biases, etc... We should all be so lucky.

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That is a rather silly notion. We've even seen in cultures that didn't understand what it was that they were seeing, that man simply tries to describe and understand things in terms of what they DO understand. My guess would be that if an American Indian suddenly saw a jet, they would probably describe it as a "very large, loud silver bird". To say that they wouldn't see it would not go hand in hand with what we know of primative cultures, like the aborigines.

As for a baby, they "see" but don't understand at first, until they see the same thing over and over and start forming associations.

I don't think the extreme position is called for - obviously sense react to something without prior experience. But what we percieve must as well be considered as highly influenced by our experience. Even so called illusions have cultural contexts.